Comment: Road to reconciliation has to be smooth

The MDP’s participation in Parliament and promise to rejoin the talks – the latter reportedly indicated to PPM parliamentary group leader Abdulla Yameen by none other than former President Mohammed Nasheed – are clear on specifics. The party wants both Parliament and the political negotiations to address reforms to ‘independent constitutional institutions’ as indicated by the report of the Commission of National Inquiry (CoNI).

The report, as may be recalled, had upheld the constitutional validity of power-transfer effected on President Nasheed’s resignation on February 7 and had recommended on issues of common concern, over which there has been across-the-board unanimity of sorts. There are differences over phraseology and details – as between the need for ‘institutional reforms’, as sought by the MDP and ‘institutional empowerment’ – but no political party in the government has seriously contested the need for a re-look at the independent institutions and their functioning.

In fact, parties are also united on the need for looking at the CoNI recommendations in this regard. It is not impossible to achieve much of this before the deadline possibly set by the presidential polls due this time next year, if political parties put ‘national interest’ and ‘national reconciliation’ ahead of petty political agendas and electoral tactic in the coming weeks and months. After all, the very same players could give themselves a new Constitution some four years back the same way, and there is no reason why they could not do so again.